Over the last few decades, the process for producing broadcast news programs has undergone several changes. Increased competition brought about by the expansion of cable outlets and other news sources, and changes in technology, have forced news broadcasters to use their resources more effectively.
To produce a news program, a typical news production organization performs four major operations, which are illustrated in FIG. 1. In particular, the operations include video production 10, graphics production 12, text production 14 and on-air operations 16. Unfortunately, the results of these operations rarely are combined effectively until the actual broadcast of the news program.
Video production 10 includes generating and editing motion video for broadcasting using video information retrieved from a video archive or produced from various sources (e.g., cameras, either studio or field recorded). Text production 14 includes scripting and editing of text gathered from several sources including a text archive. Similar to video production 10 and text production 14, graphics production 12 includes generating and editing graphics data, such as titling and still images gathered from a variety of sources.
In order to produce a final news product for broadcast, results from video production 10, graphics production 12 and text production 14 must be properly integrated during the on-air operations 16. Existing news broadcast systems are capable of such integration. In particular, these systems permit complete management of the audio and video elements of the news program from acquisition, through editing, distribution and on-air play.
A conventional process for integrating the major operations is illustrated in FIG. 2. As shown in FIG. 2, a disk-based video production operation 30 is integrated with a media production process 32 and on air operations 34. The use of disk-based digital audio/video storage systems, digital networks, and digital non-linear editing systems has allowed for successful integration of video production, graphics production and on-air operations. Several products are available from Avid Technology, Inc., Tewksbury, Mass., for providing the integration process shown in FIG. 2.
The newsroom text production and management system 14 of FIG. 2 is the same text production and management system 14 shown in FIG. 1. Although newsroom computer systems have been in use for several years, these computer systems are predominantly text based, and have limited integration capabilities with tape-based or disk-based audio/video production systems. Newsroom computer systems, such as those previously available from BaSys, and now from Avid Technology under the name NetStation, have developed from systems which were developed to receive news agency copy and provide simple word processing and communications facilities. In more recent years, add-ons of various kinds have been developed which provide some integration of the text production operation with the audio/video production operation. However, only limited integration of the text and audio/video data has been achieved, thereby providing only limited multimedia capability.
In a typical news production organization, a journalist develops an idea for a story, and determines how various audio/video clips should be used in the story. Often, the journalist will preview audio/video footage that has been archived, and select portions of the archived footage, called clips, for use in the story. Then, the journalist provides instructions to an editor who edits the clips to produce a final form of the story that is suitable for broadcast.
In some instances, particularly if the story is complex, the journalist may wish to prepare a rough form of the story and provide the rough form to the editor for final preparation. A rough form of what the journalist expects for the final form of the story is better than verbal or hand written instructions. To this end, if the journalist wishes to incorporate video from a previous broadcast that is contained in a video tape archive, the journalist must request that the tape be retrieved manually, and must then review the tape in an edit bay or a similar location. The journalist may then perform some preliminary editing of the archived video, with other material such as video of recent events, text and graphics received over news wire services, and archived text, before providing the rough form to the editor and instructing the editor to prepare the final form of the story for broadcast. In present day systems, the capability to perform the above-identified functions is not available to the journalist in a newsroom system, but as discussed above, must be performed remotely, for example, in an edit bay.
Furthermore, a journalist may wish to prepare a story about a particular event while the event unfolds. If the journalist has access to a live feed of the event, it is likely that the journalist will record the event on a video tape using a video tape recorder (VTR), or in a file on a disk using a non-linear disk-based audio/video production system. If the journalist is recording the event on video tape and wishes to prepare a rough form of the story by integrating recorded portions of event, the journalist must stop the VTR, and rewind the video tape to the specific recorded portions intended for integration. If new developments occur while the journalist is using the VTR to integrate the recorded portions, the live feed of these new developments will be lost unless the live feed is recorded simultaneously on a second tape using a second VTR. Similarly, if the journalist is using a conventional non-linear disk-based audio/video production system to record the live feed in a file, the journalist must terminate the recording before the journalist can access the recorded portions from the file for integration into the story. To record additional developments of the event on the disk-based system, the journalist must record the additional developments into a second file. Storage of the event among multiple tapes and files is inefficient and requires additional overhead to keep track of multiple tapes and files.